There's a baby coming in
"The Originals" Season 1 finale, and it's not really working out how Elijah, Klaus and co. had planned (considering Hayley is MIA and not safe in the Originals' mansion).

"It's exactly what they didn't want to happen," star Daniel Gillies tells
Zap2it. "Considering they were moving heaven and Earth in order to provide her some kind of refuge and sanctuary, it was almost prophetically written in stone that it was just going to be undone in the most unholy way."

Put simply, Elijah is not in a good place right now. "This is the most beaten we've ever seen him, the most destroyed and devastated," he says. "What they do fabulously in this show, I think, is there's a beautiful harmony between the destruction we see physically and the emotional depreciation and onslaught. The more beat to s*** these guys become, basically, the more emotionally ravaged you're gonna see them."

The baby, though, is a hope of something better on the horizon -- if only she can make it safely into the world. "Not to compare my life to this fantastical kingdom that is 'The Originals,' but in my own life I remember it almost felt like the baby was never going to come," Gillies, who welcomed a daughter with his wife Rachael Leigh Cook in September 2013.

"I'll never forget the day that we went to the doctor and they said 'You should kind of induce now, because this is it.' Suddenly this birth is upon them and it's a maelstrom. It's like them waking up into a nightmare."

The impending birth means that Elijah doesn't really have time to bring up the elephant in the room -- namely, his insane attraction to his brother's baby mama. "While there's all this mayhem, they almost can't address those issues," he says.

"Unfortunately, right now it's just about survival and waiting for the birth. They're in the middle of a cataclysm right now and that's the major focus. When that recedes, then they're going to have to take a good, long look at themselves and I think there's going to be a lot of guilt and anger."

In the vaguest of terms, Gillies describes the finale as "the end of a chapter and the beginning of another. I know that sounds SO vague. We've been inching towards it all season in the form of the metaphor and allegory of this birth, and there's certainly a dark spirit to the episode."

He continues, "There's this kind of tragic texture watching these people meet their inevitable outcome. There's something so profoundly written in stone about what's supposed to happen. These people are nobly fighting against it, but fate is ultimately dictating who they are. What's sort of tragic about them is these people are unmistakably who they are, with tremendous duties and even more tremendous flaws. We're watching them come undone under the insurmountable weight of those flaws at the moment. It's a family desperately trying to love each other even though they're not exactly built to be able to do so."

"The Originals" Season 1 finale airs Tuesday (May 13) at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.